No Replacements and the Blue Shell Mechanic

[camn]

OK... This it just straight from my head.... But I wanna pound it out.

I hate lurkers.
The only thing I hate as much as lurkers? Replacements.
I want to somehow design a mechanic that can accommodate a no-replacement, no-lurker ruleset. Like BaM, but better.

To start from the top, my thoughts are as follows:

Rules:
Normal EXCEPT:
1) NO LURKING. POST OR PERISH.
If you fail to post during a normal gameday, you are modkilled. Quicklynch days excepted. And the player is blacklisted for 6 months.

2) NO REPLACEMENTS
None. If something comes up...you go out in a blaze of glory. Suicide or victory.

Now, doesn't that Bork the game? Won't scum preferentially kill off active townies leaving a nice lurkertown to eat later on? (Which happens anyway!!)
That is where the Blue Shell mechanic comes in.
For every modkill..the faction suffering the modkill is rewarded somehow with a night action or something. A dayvig. A 1-shot bulletproof. Whatever, per mod discretion, for rebalance.

The goal? To encourage good townplay. To encourage vigging, lynching, and nightkilling LURKERS as the means of their destruction.
Most especially, to encourage scum to nightkill lurkers.

Can this work?
Has it been done?

Please discuss.

[Antihero]

couple things:

1) you would need a hard and fast definition of "quicklynch" (a time cutoff)
2) the perk mechanic seems swingy as hell since the perks would also give a confirmed town. it seems like something that's really hard to balance for when designing the setup

[camn]

1) that would be no problem. It could be a very similar rule to force replacement.

2) that's the point! Although it wouldn't HAVE to be. It could be a nightkill block. but it could be obvious! The scum could have just killed the lurker, and avoided the punishment.

One of the main reasons for this would be to discourage scum from selecting a lurky town, and lurky lurking to a scum win.

Of course, it can go both ways.
A modkill if a scum lurker might result in a strongarm ability or a godfather?

[camn]

Because the town should have lynched his punk ass!

[camn]

And it is NOT called the "perk" mechanic.

It's called Blue Shelling.
And it MAKES GAMES FUN.
that's why it is awesome.

[Antihero]

in the case of multiple lurkers?

[camn]

FUCKING KILL THEM ALL

[Antihero]

i mean... i appreciate the sentiment and it sounds good in the theory but it also sounds like it would be hard to actually implement fairly

maybe i'm wrong and just being a pooh-pooher...

[Antihero]

also, are you familiar w/ BAM?

[camn]

Though, srsly, it would just lead to more power. Maybe 2 town lurkers get killed, leaving a town doublevoter and a doctor.

Pedit. Fair? Who cares about fair?
Replacements are not fair to scum.
Lurkers at not fair to town.

And yes.

[Antihero]

Fair? Who cares about fair?

[camn]

The problem with Bam is that is still supports scum weeding OUT active players and keeping lurkers. We gotta fix that.

And BaM is certainly not "fair"

[Antihero]

i don't think it is either, but i'm thinking advertising the game as bam helps deter flakers from even signing up in the first place

[camn]

This is cut from the same cloth.. Kind of an uber-BaM

[camn]

Post-BaM?

[camn]

To make it more "fair", it could be a randomly selected bonus ability to a randomly selected player.
Which, given the odds,, would benefit the town, thus encouraging scumkills of lurkers.
It would avoid a conf-town situation.

[camn]

The verbiage would be:

"Antihero was BlueShelled for inactivity"

[camn]

Actually randomization could be tight.
It would be risky enough of totally swinging the game that everyone would be encouraged to see lurkers dead.

[camn]

I'm allowed to sextuple post in my own thread, right?

[Rob14]

Rebalancing a game in the middle per moderator discretion sounds like literal cancer. That's super bastard.

[Davsto]

I can't help but feel this would result in tactical modkillings, which is so bad I'm honestly terrified.

[Davsto]

Rebalancing a game in the middle per moderator discretion sounds like literal cancer. That's super bastard.

this too

[camn]

Rob- explain? It's only rebalancing to makeup for the modkill, and the mechanic would be in the rulset. Having shifting, aquired, or one time powers are all nonbastard.

davsto- tactical how? No one can FORCE someone to lurk...
Plus, it can all be avoided! Kill the lurkers yourselves, avoid mod interference.

[camn]

Plus, this is an alternative to replacement, which is already used tactically and is awful.

[fferyllt]

Your game, your rules. If it works and players like it maybe other mods will consider it as well.

After playing here non-stop for howeverthefuck many years it's been, I've concluded (I'm slow, ok?) that it's not worth investing months into MS games when there's such a high chance that other players will half-ass it as original players or as replacements. When I realized during my last 2-3 games that I wasn't even trying to give the game my best any more because why bother?, I decided it was time to start putting my time into more enjoyable things with more tangible results for a while.

If I start playing again, it will probably be exclusively as a replacement. That way I can avoid the early lurker shit and be a better part of the solution in the later game.